In my recent post about exercise, I mentioned running a couple 5K races this summer. For each one, I made room in my dresser for a new t-shirt proudly proclaiming that I participated in the race. My kids also have acquired a few new shirts this summer for camps and sports they’ve participated in. This has been going on for a while. I’m reminded of it when I see my youngest wearing handed down t-shirts from things his brother went to 6 years ago.

But what do you do with them all? Do you continue to stuff your dresser drawer with another and another? People don’t really keep all of them, do they? I’ve only done a couple of races so I can’t imagine what a serious competitor does with all of the t-shirts they collect.

I also cringe when I’m at a baseball game with my family and they start shooting t-shirts into the stands. I always hope that one doesn’t come our way. Oddly enough, we did catch one not long ago. Of course, it was way too big for my daughter. The crazy thing is that someone actually stole it later as people were leaving the stadium.

So what do you do if you’re drowning in free t-shirts that you never wear?

Remember that just because you received a free shirt for something, you’re not obligated to wear it or keep it. At one time I owned a drawer full of t-shirts from my college fraternity that I never wore. I finally took them all out and piled them in my closet. I thought I would mail them to the fraternity house or something but never did. Eventually I donated them along with a bunch of other clothes and I haven’t missed them.

There are companies who specialize in making quilts out of t-shirts. One I looked at online is called Project Repat and it seems to have good reviews. They can make a 16 shirt lap-quilt for about $75, up to a 64 shirt king size quilt costing about $240. Another is called Campus Quilt. They seemed a little more expensive, but claim to be faster than others and pointed out that they actually quilt their blankets, not just sew them around the edges. If you’re interested in this route, you may want to read a few reviews of each and see if that’s what you’re interested in.

My recommendation is that if you go this route, you should actually plan on using the resulting quilt and not just store it in a closet. In that case, you might as well have just kept the shirts.

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